The Celtics have gotten rid of their morning walkthrough, but that doesn’t mean we have to. Here are a few Celtics links, and maybe even an NBA link or two, to help wake you up and get you focused for the day.

Doesn't that guy standing up look really pissed?

Brian Kamenetzky, ESPN Los Angeles – “Phil Jackson loves the game within the game. Heading into Thursday’s Game 1 of the NBA Finals with the Los Angeles Lakers and Boston Celtics, one piques his curiosity more than the rest. ‘I’m intrigued by the [Kevin] Garnett-Pau Gasol matchup. I think that’s a really good one,’ he said Wednesday after the Lakers completed practice. ‘Kevin is like the force of [Boston's] defense, he’s really the glue that kind of holds their defense together with his activity level, his ability to help and recover on guys,’ Jackson continued. ‘Pau is the guy we have to have be a part of the scoring combo with Kobe. So he has to provide some of that for us in this series against probably one of the top defenders in the game.’”

Dan Shaughnessy, Boston Globe – “Now it’s all about Kobe Bryant. Do not forget this. The Celtics and Lakers tap off in Game 1 tonight, and it’s impossible to understate the Kobe factor. Bryant won’t admit it, but he is on a mission to solidify his legacy by winning a championship against the hated Celtics. He has won with Shaq and without Shaq. He has beaten the Indiana Pacers, the Philadelphia 76ers, the New Jersey Nets, and the Orlando Magic in the Finals. But he’s never beaten Boston. You can’t be the best player in the world if you lose two championship series to the Celtics. You can’t be the greatest Laker of all time if Magic can say he beat the Celtics twice in the Finals and you never beat them.”

J.A. Adande, ESPN – “‘Phil always has that ulterior motive, that hidden message,’ said Will Perdue, who played on Jackson’s first three-peat teams in Chicago and was Rivers’ teammate on the San Antonio Spurs. ‘I think 90 percent of the time the players never figure it out. He guides them without them even knowing. Doc is very to the point, very blatant, very honest. ‘This is what I need you to do, this is what your responsibility is, this is how you do it.’ Some coaches can’t pull that off, because they either didn’t play or they don’t have the respect of the players or whatever reason.’ Perdue points to Jackson’s comments about Ron Artest taking too many 3-pointers early in the playoffs, which caused Artest to complain on Twitter that Jackson hadn’t spoken to him privately about the issue first. But what happened after two days of a minor media flareup? Artest produced his best game of the playoffs to that point, scoring 20 points in the Lakers’ victory over the Utah Jazz in Game 3 of the Western Conference semifinals. Another subliminal success for Jackson. Rivers doesn’t have to operate that way. ‘Everybody here, we’re at the stage where we kind of patrol ourselves, so Doc doesn’t have to do a lot of worrying about it,’ Ray Allen said. ‘He can throw the X’s and O’s out there, tell us what to do, how we’re going to do it, and everybody can do their job.’”

Chris Dufresne, LA Times – “The definition of a rivalry depends on whom you ask. A Celtic, sipping suds on a bar stool, could look a Laker square in the eye and say, ‘What rivalry?’ Notre Dame versus Navy in football was a rivalry, maybe, for Navy. It wasn’t for the Irish, which won 43 straight until Navy turned the ship in 2007 (and 2009). Was it a rivalry all those stretches the Yankees clobbered Brooklyn in the World Series … or just same time next year? Angels fans looked at the Dodgers as adversaries 25 years before Dodgers fans knew the Angels had been awarded a franchise. It is, frankly, impossible for a Celtics fan to wish a contagious skin rash on a Lakers fan more than the opposite is true because Boston has the half-baked bean facts in its can. Any L.A. sports fan born in the early baby boom, who went to bed crying after most NBA finals, and refused to wear green on St. Patrick’s Day, knows this. When one team owns the other, as the Celtics have owned the Lakers, what you think is a rivalry may actually be ‘Oh, You guys again?’ vs. ‘Oh, YOU GUYS again!!’ It took the Lakers nine tries before they beat the Celtics in the NBA Finals. That’s misery, not rivalry.”

Jerry Thornton, WEEI – “But for me, there’s one thing above all others this series is offering up. And I thank God and David Stern for it (though that’s probably redundant). This series is giving us something Boston fans have been sorely lacking of late: a true hated enemy. But this series has it. Kobe Bryant: The ideal nemesis. The pluperfect sports jerk. The Ultimate Villain. I promise you I’m not just trying to talk some attention-whoring smack here. This isn’t some lame-ass, obvious attempt to answer back to Ted Green of the LA Times for trying to mine the comedy gold that was the near murder of Paul Pierce. Having weak cheese like that be published is the perfect punishment to him for having written it in the first place. No, I mean this sincerely, honestly, and from the bottom of my heart: Kobe Bryant is the biggest, most insufferable dink in all of professional sports. And we’ve had more than our share of villains over the years. A rogue’s gallery of miserable, unlikable misanthropes, vicious, head-hunting psychopaths and cheating, mentally-defective scumbags. From Ulf Samuelsson to Bill Laimbeer. Jack Tatum to Albert Belle. Thurman Munson to Alex Rodriguez. And every Dennis Rodman, Joey Porter, Joba Chamberlain and Mickey Rivers in between. But you could harvest body parts from every one of them and sew them together into one detestable package, reanimate it, teach it to jump shoot, and you’d end up with Kobe Bryant. He’s Frankentool.”

Julian Benbow, Boston Globe – “A David Ortiz jersey was nowhere to be found, so Celtics coach Doc Rivers asked for the next best thing. The Celtics were walking off the floor at Staples Center after outlasting the Lakers, 87-86, Feb. 18 and Rivers turned to his administrative right hand man, Jeff Twiss. ‘Do you have an envelope?’ Rivers asked. Twiss was puzzled. The game was over. There was no need for tickets. But Rivers wanted an envelope. So he got Rivers an envelope. They walked into the Celtics locker room, which was booming after breaking up the Lakers’ four-game winning streak. Rivers got their attention. He told everyone in the room to give him $100. The people in the room were more puzzled than Twiss was. Rivers took $100 from everyone in the room – players, coaches, managers – to the tune of $2,600 and put it all in the envelope. He then hid the envelope in the locker room. ‘The only way you’ll get it back,’ he told them, ‘is if you come back here and get it.’ The challenge was set months ago, and when the Celtics returned to Staples Center today, a day before Game 1 of the Finals, Rivers made good on his part of the deal, opening the envelope and giving each player his reward.”

The Hyperbolic Chamber – “You see, when you love a team that deeply, the ecstasy of winning a championship after years of misery (see: Red Sox, 2004) is unparalleled. That’s why I rooted for the White Sox in 2005 and the Phillies in 2008. There are only so many passionate sports cities in the U.S–I knew what those fans were going through, and I wanted them to feel how I felt in June 2008. I spent my teenage years (when I first discovered a love for sports) rooting for a punching bag that wore the same colors as former proud champions but shamed their legacy. To see them bring it back to its deserved glory made me an emotional wreck, but in the best possible sense. So now my favorite sports team is headed to the Finals, and potentially their second championship in three years. I love them but this year has been a struggle; they were a truly unlikable group of guys for several straight months. But that didn’t stop me from loving them. They say love is blind, but I’d like to offer a different opinion: love has correctable vision. During the Pitino Era, my love was far-sighted: the Celtics were an awful team, but I loved their glorious past and the hope in an unseen future success. Right now my love is near-sighted: I adore how this team is currently playing, but I am choosing to ignore that we will be in serious salary cap hell in the near future. This love sees clearly, it is anything but blind. I can see their warts (apathetic during the regular season, a star without a jump shot, several players with anger management issues, Hall of Famers on the down-slope of their careers) but that makes them all the more real. Love, of any kind, is about recognizing the good and the bad. So while we may lose, I’ll continue to bleed Green and I will scream until my voice goes hoarse. My favorite team is imperfect, and I wouldn’t dream of viewing them any other way. After all, that’s why I wear glasses, to see the world more clearly.”

Julian Benbow, Boston Globe – “The Lakers matched Kobe Bryant with Rondo, letting Bryant roam on defense without much regard for the young point guard. Other teams have copied the blueprint. And even though Rondo has learned to make teams pay, he still gets the treatment. The Heat’s Dwyane Wade did it in the first round. When Rondo made barebones out of Anthony Parker in the second round, the Cavaliers threw LeBron James at him. In the Eastern Conference finals, the Magic sagged off of Rondo, giving him the jumper. And as much as Rondo has changed as a player in two years, Rivers expects the Lakers to defend Rondo the same way. ‘They’re going to put Kobe on him at times, and they’re going to sag off him,’’ Rivers said. “I think teams still think at the end of the day, he’s got to make shots. He’s got to make decisions. They’re going to use his guy to roam the floor. I don’t think that’s going to change at all.’ The difference, Rivers pointed out: ‘Now, Rondo’s better-suited for it.’”

Bill Plaschke, LA Times – “Welcome to a series where the Lakers aren’t playing the Boston Celtics as much as both of them could soon be tangling with the one of the most majestic, maddening statistics in sports. It’s all about a number. A number so trivial that half the players in the series are unaware of it, yet so powerful it could end the series almost before it starts. A number with as much lore as Kobe Bryant’s 24, as alive as Kevin Garnett’s 5, even more important than the number of the paramedics that Paul Pierce will phone the first time he is gently pushed to the wood. You’ve probably heard the number. You’ve probably thought you heard it wrong. You haven’t. When Phil Jackson’s teams have won the first game of a postseason series, they are 47-0 in that series. Think about that. When Jackson’s teams win Game 1, it’s Series Done. If they win the first one, they will win the last one. Nineteen seasons. Every single time. [...] So I called the folks from Caltech. A couple of grad students in applied and computational mathematics —Stephen Becker and Mike McCoy — figured that the odds of going 47-0 by coincidence were less than three in a billion. ‘I would be demoralized if I were the other team,’ Becker said.”

Henry Abbott, TrueHoop – “Zach Lowe of CelticsHub has been on the Rondo’s shooting story all year, and last night wrote ‘Rondo’s shooting percentage on long two-pointers dropped significantly this season (and fell below even his ‘08 numbers), and he’s just 16-of-49 on long twos so far in the playoffs, according to NBA.com hot spot data.’ Synergy Sports lets you watch all of his jumpers, and finds jump shooting in the half court to be the one method of scoring at which Rondo is below average. He took nearly 300 jumpers over the course of the regular season, and made just a third of them. That’s not good. He was two percentage points better a season ago, and nine percentage points back in 2007-2008, when the Lakers decided to leave him open in the Finals. What’s more, his career 3-point field goal percentage is a miserable 24%. This season he lags behind even that, at 21%. It’s hard to find any evidence that his jumper has improved at all.”

Julian Benbow/Frank Dell’Apa, Boston Globe – “Kevin Garnett’s appreciation for the Celtics-Lakers rivalry originated with a meeting with Bill Russell. ‘You definitely have to have an appreciation for the ones that came before you, respect this game,’ said Garnett. ‘I think you have to have an appreciation for the players who built this rivalry, if not this league, and you can’t go in nothing short of that. I think it’s our responsibility as Celtics and as Lakers to leave everything out there on the floor — just because of the coaches and players and the personnel of the organizations that came before us. And that’s the responsibility of putting that jersey on, that’s what you take on.’”

Ron Borges, Boston Herald – “Fortunately for his mental health and the Celtics chances against the Lakers, [Tony] Allen doesn’t see it quite that way. He understands his role, which is to play the kind of pressure defense on Bryant that James Posey did in the Finals two years ago, but he also knows he is not alone in this job. He is a part of the whole, a piece that, if properly fit, will make a difference. But X factor? Take it easy, now. ‘I don’t know about that,’ Allen said yesterday during his last relaxing day at Staples Center. ‘I don’t know nothing about me stopping Kobe. All I know is all the heavyweights we went through has been about team defense.’”

Mark Murphy, Boston Herald – “It’s not a question of whether Rajon Rondo [stats] has achieved confidence in his second NBA Finals in three years. The Celtics point guard, known for cockiness and for self-belief that is often off the charts, was feeling his oats two days ago during a practice at UCLA. ‘I’m probably at an all-time high in confidence right now,’ he admitted.”

Dan Duggan, Boston Herald – “When the Celtics beat the Lakers in the 2008 Finals, the second-year point guard mostly was along for the ride. Rondo still was trying to figure out his role alongside three future Hall of Famers, and that led to inconsistency. Rondo showed flashes of his potential when he had 21 points, seven rebounds, eight assists and six steals in the Celtics’ clinching Game 6 win. But he was also a nonfactor in Games 3, 4 and 5, when he totaled just 16 points and was benched in favor of backup Eddie House for long stretches. ‘It was a little different,’ Lakers forward Pau Gasol said. ‘He wasn’t as good a player as he is today.’ Now, Gasol calls Rondo the Celtics’ ‘motor.’ It’s a fitting description, because when Rondo’s engine is in high gear, the Celtics typically are at their best. ‘He’s gotten better at a very fast rate,’ Lakers point guard Derek Fisher said. ‘He’s become arguably the most important guy on their team in terms of when he plays very well, they’re harder to beat.’”

Kirk Minihane, WEEI – “The real question, of course, is how much we’ll actually see Fisher defending Rondo in this series. My best guess? Phil Jackson will give Fisher a chance on Rondo to start each game. But it’ll be a short leash, because Jackson knows that when Rondo sets the tempo of a game it usually leads to a Celtics win. So you’ll see four or five guys — Fisher, Kobe, Shannon Brown, Jordan Farmar, even Ron Artest — taking a shot at slowing down Rondo. I can’t imagine Jackson uses Kobe for more than a couple of minutes at a time on Rondo. Can’t afford to wear Kobe out in a series that he’ll almost certainly play north of 40 minutes a game.”

John Powers, Boston Globe – “The similarities, across more than four decades, are striking. Both were veteran teams that finished fourth after arrhythmic regular seasons. Both beat considerable odds to reach the NBA Finals against Los Angeles. Both were built around a Big Three and emphasized defensive essentials. ‘Both were old and somehow knew how to win a little bit,’ says John Havlicek, who won the most cherished of his eight title rings 41 years ago. Yet there is one decided difference between the 1969 and 2010 Celtics. The 1969 team marked the end of the greatest dynasty in sports history, 11 championships in 13 years. The 2010 version is trying to prove that its triumph two years ago wasn’t a one-hit wonder.”

David Wharton, LA Times – “Things get a little more complicated for Pierce, the 6-foot-7 forward out of Inglewood High who used to catch glimpses of Magic Johnson driving to the arena and sneak into games. ‘The Lakers were always his team,’ said Sgt. Scott Collins of the Inglewood Police Department, who coached Pierce in a youth league and became his mentor. ‘He loved Magic.’ These days, Pierce says all the right things about being a Celtic, about meeting legends such as John Havlicek and Bob Cousy, about establishing himself among the greatest scorers in franchise history. And when it comes to the Lakers, well, this rivalry doesn’t allow for fence-sitting. ‘I really don’t have any friends on the Lakers. No one on this team does,’ Pierce said.”

Jessica Camerato, WEEI – “[David Ortiz on Kevin Garnett]: ‘KG is the monster down there. KG, he puts everybody in the mood. When he’s [trash talking] people out there and getting mad, that pumps me up. That even gets me ready to play baseball. I love it. I love it. I’m telling you, when I see KG doing that, I want to jump on the court and [kick butt] with him. It’s not a secret that his game is something else.’”

Have a link I might want to look at? Send it my way by email (jayking@celticstown.com) or Twitter.